The Ophiuchi Project
by Scarabbug
Summary: The Knight Industries Two Thousand was not programmed with the ability to imagine things, but with a saboteur out destroy the organization, KITT's nonexistent images are perhaps the only evidence Michael has to go on, to solve a two decades old mystery.
1. Prologue

**The title of this fanfiction was inspired a novel written by John Varley, "**_**The Ophiuchi Hotline**_**, a name which is taken in turn from the constellation **_**Ophiuchus**_**, which depicts ****a giant holding a poisonous serpent and standing on the back of the scorpion (which makes up another constellation, **_**Serpens**_**). If you're interested you can look up the related tales and legends online. For information on the constellation itself, look up the wikipedia page **_**RS Ophiuchi**_

**Disclaimer: This fanfiction has been created purely for the entertainment of the writer and other interested fans of the **_**Knight Rider**_**™ television series. No profit is gained from its publication on this website. **_**Knight Rider**_**™ and all related characters are property of **_**Glen Larson Productions**_**™, which has the right to demand the removable of the fiction and all related content at any time, and with whom the writer of this fanfiction has no affiliation. **

**The title is subject to change...

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Red Light: The Ophiuchi Project.

Prologue. 

_It's been raining for a few hours now. _

_Its midday, but the dull, storm-forced clouds make it feel later. The plastic canopies of surrounding retail stores are weighed down with water and one of the road drains is blocked and flooding the surrounding sidewalk. People in raincoats hop around the puddle on their way through the downpour. They keep their heads bowed as they walk, but that probably doesn't help. It's amazing to think that there are people out at all, but the streets are rarely ever calm and quiet this close to New Years, even during a storm there's shopping to be done. This is Arizona, and it's the wrong time of year for a storm of this intensity but nonetheless, the storm is here, and pounding hard on the rooftops and pavements._

_A young woman stands in the doorway of a water-sodden corner store.. She's wearing red. Red coat, red shoes, red stockings, red everything. She carries no purse or umbrella (the wind would probably make using one difficult), but she has a camera held in both hands, facing forwards, the way someone might take a picture. Her own, real eyes are blank and expressionless and her dark brown hair is soaked and plastered to her forehead by the rain. _

_With slow, even steps she approaches the car in front of her, standing in the small car park attached to the store. Another source of red is the steadily shifting light, sitting at the very edge of the car's hood. The car appears customised, but the red, glowing light of the scanner is built in, rather than some flashy, glued on feature. The rest of its body is black and sleek, smoother than any paint job, reflecting the rain like a mirror. It's the kind of car a boy racer would gawk at. _

_The red light swings constantly from side to side, and as she approaches it seems to move more rapidly. It's as if the closer she gets, the more uneasy it becomes. The red light is its eyes, its sight, and its glare reflects in hers. It is impossible to tell what she is thinking, if she is thinking anything at all. _

_Lightning flashes in a sheet across the sky, and for just a second, the streets seem almost as bright as they should during daylight. Then there's a sound like gunshot as the thunder follows. It's as I the sky is a curved, grey bubble, breaking open to let loose the rain. The woman takes one last step forwards, until she is standing directly in front of the car's windshield, and raises the camera carefully to her eyes. _

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	2. One

**In truth, I was slightly reluctant to post this chapter, due to the fact I haven't got it finalised and organized in my head, and that's always a bad thing where my fic is concerned. However, I am going to be impatient today, throw caution to the wind and post it anyway. I'd rather show something than nothing, to be honest, so this here is a sorta something… **

**Reviews and concrit are appreciated**.

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Red Light: The Ophiuchi Project.

One.

'…_And then she sat in front of my scanner!' _

Michael blinked, feeling glad that they were waiting at a red light when KITT decided to come out with that. He'd already considered using the Traffic Manipulation device about a hundred times, but… no. They'd never get away with it, and Devon would never let him _forget _it. 'She what?'

'_Sat down on the pavement, in front of my scanner._' KITT repeated. He seemed unusually perturbed by the fact._ 'For precisely three minutes and twenty seven seconds, in the middle of the rain, no less.' _

'I… see.' He didn't, really. Or at least, he didn't see what was so important about it. The Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT as he was known to many) tended to stand out in an average car park, in spite of attempts to make it so that he didn't. Even now there was something strange about the six year old black t-top which should've looked perfectly at home in the middle of the glistening rain in the middle of a crowded highway.

'_It was a very strange experience. _Bewildering_ seems more like the proper word, actually. I'm used to people gawking, but her gaze never broke or wavered for so much as a second and I don't believe she was a car enthusiast.' _

'So… she was staring at you? Definitely _at_ you, I mean, not at something across the street?'

'Michael_, give me some credit. And it was more along the lines of _gazing firmly_ than _staring_. It simply struck me as unusual.'_

Finally the lights changed and the black Trans-am pulled out of the inner city streets and start heading for the highway. Michael had never been that comfortable piloting KITT through crowded places. It made them both claustrophobic and irritated. 'Well, maybe she just liked your little red light?'

'_Michael, small children like my "little red light" as you call it. _Becky_ likes my little red lights. _Bonnie_ likes them where my proper functioning is _concernedG_rown women with whom I have no connection and who are out on the street carrying cameras in _this_ weather aren't usually that way inclined.' _

'Did she take a picture?'

'_That's the especially odd thing: she didn't. She had it raised to her sights several times prior to sitting down, but she never clicked the shutter or gave any other indication that she was photographing me. I scanned the mechanics of the object – it was definitely just an ordinary camera and none of my systems were affected by her presence…'_

'And… all this happened while I was in the store?' Michael wasn't entirely sure what to make of this story. 'Set things straight for me here, buddy. Are we dealing with something suspicious or just a little weird?'

'_You're the FLAG operative, Michael, you tell me. She was sitting on the pavement in the pouring rain with a camera and _staring_ at me_.'

'You count as an operative. And I thought up said she _wasn't_ staring.'

'_Well… no, but it certainly felt as if she was, at the time. It'… _disquieting_, having someone look at you for that length of time without explanation or reason. Human beings are naturally unlikely to maintain full focus on any one object for longer than ten seconds, much less three minutes and twenty-seven. The last time anyone stared at me like that, they were ten seconds away from trying to break into me.' _

Michael grinned, drawing to a stop at another red light. The traffic was building up, and he suspected it would have jammed completely before they got to the highway. No one would risk going over fifty in the kind of weather they were getting now, which meant they were probably going to be behind time in getting back to the Foundation.

Still, wasn't it the Chinese who invented the saying that you shouldn't hurry when you were already late? 'He gets a little female attention and all he can do is psycho-analyse the girl. KITT you are so very much not human.'

'_I'm not certain whether to take that as an insult or something else, Michael. On that note, it's hardly a good idea for a woman to stand out in the rain like that in such attire. Humans are very susceptible to illness when exposed to these kinds of temperatures.' _

'I'm sure whoever she was, she knew what she was doing.'

'_Which was?'_ The red modulator wavered in pitch. Seeing KITT confused was a strange experience due to it being highly irregular. If KITT didn't know what was happening then it was usually time to start worrying, but Michael couldn't really see anything behind this except for a girl with no common sense.

'I'll let you know when I think of it. Maybe she was some kind of a freelance photographer and got caught out in the storm…'

'_Then why not proceed to the nearest sheltered area as opposed to just standing there?_' KITT sounded concerned and paused for a moment before continuing._ 'Michael, I have no doubt that she was waiting for us. Perhaps since long before we arrived…' _

'And then did absolutely nothing when we got there?'

'_Perhaps she was trying to send us a coded message of some sort. Via body language, or some other obscure signalling my programs aren't coded to translate.' _

Michael had to pause for a second there, as much due to what KITT said as the fact that the next traffic light didn't seem to be able to decide whether it was on green or not. So far as he knew, the list of things KITT wasn't (or couldn't be) programmed to understand wasn't exactly a very long one. Hell, he could tell what Michael was thinking about just from the way his fingers tapped against the dashboard, for Christ's sakes.

His next idea was beyond a long shot but Michael suggested it anyway. 'You could always have imagined her.'

'Excuse me?' KITT seemed just as annoyed by that theory as Michael had thought he would be.

'You know. Imaginedher. Let your brain wander.'

'_Michael, I _don't_ imagine things.' _

'Who says?'

'_Bonnie.'_ KITT answered, in a tone of voice (or modulation or… whatever) which suggested that this said it all.

'Oh, of course. Mom's word is law, huh?'

'_Very funny. But in all seriousness, Michael, I'm really not programmed to simply dream up the existence of young girls in red, standing out in the rain. My systems aren't set up in a way which would allow for the construction of artificial scenarios… not in that sense. Besides, she was very much real and very much registering on all my relevant sensors. Check the logs if you don't believe me_.'

Michael tried to suppress a smile and failed. 'Relax, pal, I believe you. You're right, it _is_ strange…' He lowered the window just for a second to catch a glimpse of a potential gap in the nose to nose vehicles heading up the motorway, then decided that was a bad idea when half the storm seemed to hit him in the face. The wind was picking up and water was drumming against the windshield. It was raining harder than he'd realised. '…Why anyone would be out in _this_ kind of weather…'

'_We happen to fall into the "out in this kind of weather" category right now, Michael. We're also at least half an hour late_.'

'Don't remind me. I have other things to worry about besides the damn weather, huh?'

'_You're concerned about the Foundation Anniversary Presentation. Which just so happens to coincide with what would have been the eighty-eighth birthday of its founder, Wilton Knight.'_

Yup. Fingers tapping against the dashboard. 'No hiding anything from you, huh?'

'_Certainly no hiding the fact that your muscle tension increases every time either of us mentions the words "_foundation_" "_anniversary_", or "_birthday_". If it makes you feel any better, Michael, your presentation is still three days away. You have plenty of time remaining in which to prepare.'_

The Foundation Anniversary Presentation and Celebration Ball. Twentieth anniversary of the founding of FLAG. The words had been on the tip of Devon's tongue (inserted between commentaries about drug runners in Paraguay and a mob-related incident in Texas or whatever other case Michael had happened to be on at the time) and on the minds of half the people in the Foundation, it seemed. Michael had to admit, he wasn't looking forwards to it half as much as he was likely expected to be.

'Three days,' he agreed. 'Three days, fourteen hours, twelve minutes, twenty eight seconds…'

'_Well, it's more like three days, fourteen hours, twelve minutes and _fifteen_ seconds, but close enough… You _are_ concerned about this, aren't you?'_

Michael shrugged without meaning to, gazing absently at the cars in the next lane, which seemed to be edging forwards just slightly faster than theirs, like customers might in a shopping queue, grabbing every inch of the pavement they could. 'It's not that I mind having to go, KITT. I _want_ to go, and even if I didn't, it's not like I haven't successfully bluffed my way though these kind of fancy celebrations a hundred times.'

'_Yes, yet you still so often fail to show up in a tuxedo where required.' _

'Hey, I always _try_. Suits are still counted as formal wear, aren't they?'

'_Not if you've been wearing them in order to infiltrate a gang of people-smugglers, gotten yourself captured and spent twenty-four hours dressed in them while tied up the back of a wagon on the Mexican border they're not.' _

'I didn't have time to change! You know with all your nifty gadgets you'd think that Bonnie could've fitted a place to store clothes.'

'_She did, it's called a trunk. I'm not a sit-in wardrobe. And can we stick to the point?'_

Michael let out a breath. There was definitely no hiding anything from KITT, and it was getting harder and harder to distract him with other subjects these days, too. He was learning to pick up on things Michael had never imagined him noticing before (and had therefore felt able to get away with) like, for example, when he was trying to change the subject.

'I'm not good with speeches that's all, KITT. I leave that kind of stuff to Devon, or Bonnie. Heck right now I'd leave it to RC.'

'_Heaven forbid. Though honestly, RC hasn't been in the Foundation for long enough to qualify as—'_

'I _know_, KITT, I know. That's not what I meant.'

'_Then you meant to emphasise how uncomfortable you are with the prospect of standing in front of approximately five hundred people, many of whom knew Wilton Knight personally and are extensively involved in the Foundation, and trying to commend the actions of a man whom you actually knew for only a short period.'_

'…Yeah, thanks, that really upped my confidence there, buddy.' Michael chose that moment to glance at the CPU screen, only to find if crackling and fuzzed over. Funny. He'd never known the weather to interfere with KITT's signals before. The AI didn't seem to notice. 'Feel like doing the speech for me?'

'_Really, Michael,'_ KITT commented dryly. _'We all know cars don't talk.'_

It was kind of surprising the number of times Michael had heard him make that joke. The irony never failed to amuse him. It was one of the few jokes KITT had that did, and Michael wasn't even sure it was really _meant_ to be one.

There was a strange clunking noise from the back of the car and the driver's seat shook ever so slightly, which was a convenient enough distraction. The cars in the queue behind were pushing closer and closer, growing restless.

'_Honestly, some drivers today…' _KITT muttered, but asides from that, neither of them acted against it. If some guy wanted to damage his own bumper by trying to ram into the back of the _Knight Industries Two Thousand_ then that was his problem (and his garage bill); and the built-in laser restrain system meant that Michael barely felt the jolt anyway.

'Hey, I'm not getting outta the car in this weather for that guy, buddy. And anyway, look on the bright side. Most of the people at this shindig will already know all about you for one thing. No strange looks whenever people try to sit on you, no need to explain yourself over and over to every guy and girl who sits _in_ you and ends up saying "_Oh my god, it talks_!"… You can just be yourself for once, instead of having to act like the showcase of the Foundation every mission.' He shuffled and let out a breath. 'I, on the other hand, will have to play the Golden Boy all night, put on a good show for Devon and all those people who are expecting great things from Wilton Knight's successor… As well as his ability to put on a tux correctly.'

'_You say that like you're a bad actor. And is it really like that _every_ mission? I stopped keeping track of the times I had to use the standard "_I am the Knight Industries Two Thousand_" introduction a long time ago.'_

Michael grinned, hoping they could get out of the traffic and onto the highway before this conversation could dissolve into bickering. He'd already lost track of where it had started, and that wasn't usually a good sign. 'KITT, you're a living computer you can't _stop_ keeping track of things.'

'_Maybe not, but permit me to believe I have illusions.'_ Another pause. '_Once again, we stray from the point. Twice over, in fact. We still know nothing about the girl in red._'

'Well, listen, if you're really worried about her, we can get Bonnie to run a check up after the rehearsal, see if her name and face pop up on any files. Until them you can just stop worrying about her and focus on helping me write this damned presentation speech. How does that sound?'

'_That would be appreciated. I admit, she _is_ distracting me…And meantime, if _I_ have to look on the bright side, Michael, then so do you. You know it'll be alright. We're attempting to uphold the memory of a man who truly needs no introduction, not standing up in a court of law. Contracts are a protected matter.'_

Michael blinked himself back into focus and pulled his eyes away from the sheet of water drumming against the window. '…What was that, KITT?'

'_I said that we are attempting to uphold the memory of a man, who truly needs no introduction. You'll do absolutely fine, trust me. And stick to a script… Probably be better if you stick to a script_.'

Either KITT's seats were getting more uncomfortable (not likely, with the way the Knight Industries two Thousand was programmed to mould itself to its driver's every movement) or Michael was getting uneasy. '_After_ that. What you said about a contract. What contract? Devon didn't mention anything like that.'

There was a pause as long as three sweeps of KITT's windshield wipers. The video screen crackled black and white and Michael resisted the temptation to whack at it. KITT probably wouldn't appreciate the gesture.

'_I'm afraid you're mistaken, Michael. I really don't see what something like that would have to do with Wilton Knight's memorial celebration. You must have misheard me.'_

If Michael hadn't been stuck in nose to nose traffic, he probably would've emergency-braked.

'I'm _not_ mistaken, that's what you said. Check your logs, buddy.'

'_I just did. That's how I know I _didn't_ mention contracts of any kind. I'm getting a bit of storm interference, certainly, but that shouldn't affect my vocal synthesisers or my cognitive processing.' _

'Alright, alright,' Michael threw up his hands in defeat. 'You win. I must've imagined it. Anyway, if you're going to give readouts on anything, why don't you try helping me come up with possible speech openings? I have no idea what I'm doing here.'

'_I'd be happy to,'_ KITT seemed to have lost his earlier unease as quickly as he had manifested it. '_May I suggest opening with an appropriate quotation? Perhaps something by Wilde? Or Ford_?'

'_Wonderful_… I guess quotes from Steve Harris are out of the question already, huh?'

'_Not even a chance. Mention any rock stars and I'll have to find a new driver.' _

Michael laughed. 'Damn it; bang go all my one liners. Charley Connors then, am I allowed to quote him?'

'…_Well_ _he's a possibility_.'

The response Michael had been about to give was drowned out by another thudding noise which probably would've been a clatter and a crunch if he'd been driving any car other than KITT. This time it was accompanied by yelling and loud toots of a car's horn.

'_Oh, for goodness sakes, that will be quite enough_.'

Michael whistled through his teeth. Amazing how just a bit of rain could make some drivers lose it. 'Easy, buddy, don't heckle the road hogs, we don't have time to race 'em to a standstill once this traffic eases.'

'_I have no intention of racing anyone,'_ KITT said. _'Block your ears.'_

Michael didn't argue, but even then, he still heard the mixture of quacking, barking, howling and a loud burst of thunder emanating from KITT's speakers at a volume to quell even the heavy thudding of the rainfall. The driver of the car behind them stopped relentlessly ramming into their rear bumper immediately, probably out of total confusion.

Michael grinned. 'That shut 'em up.'

'_Thank you_. _If you don't mind, I'm saving the blend of classical music and high volume political speeches for when he tries to overtake us_.' There was a smile in KITT's tone. _'Now, we were saying about possible speech content?'_

'Gotcha. So anyway, I was thinking maybe I could mention something from Ken Downing, just to lighten everyone up a little. Maybe play some brief ensembles…'

'_Oh Michael, _really_…' _

The journey carried on as normal, and the video screen refused to work for the rest of the storm.

_Run://programEXE//:AAXDE/stock-32/storagesectionc/longterm//:fragmented-databit/Code:Ophiuci22://Runxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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**Just call me the master of technobabble... **


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